The colors white and black function as deep metaphors, or binary oppositions, for a plethora of sociocultural dividing lines in contemporary society. In this article, the author examines a number of these dualisms to illustrate how linguistic connotations of “whiteness” and “blackness” are at the heart of a variety of commonsense mythologies of race and racial difference. The author attempts to disentangle these densely woven dualisms from the fabric of linguistic common sense and, in particular, to wrest blackness from the treacherous snare of Western ocularcentrism and its Platonic/Cartesian origins.
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